Economies of Belonging: The Impact of Investing in Local Places

Full Panel
Transcript

Note to readers: This video session was transcribed using auto-transcribing software.  Questions or concerns with the transcription can be directed to communications@canurb.org with “transcription” in the subject line.

Economies of Belonging: The Impact of Investing in Local Places

City Talk, May 22, 2025

Mary W. Rowe I’m coming to you from Toronto today. I’m really delighted to be hosting this session, I love the title Economics of Belonging. How wonderful for us to be actually communicating that the economy is actually us and it’s about us belonging to a place. And we have fabulous guests to come and talk to us about a program, My Main Street, which I’ll describe in a sec. But just, I happened to be in Toronto today, I was in London earlier this week, where the weather was also a bit grim, just saying. And Toronto is the traditional territory of a number of Inuit, First Nations and Métis peoples, and covered by Treaty 13 and the Williams Treaty, and home to the Anishinaabe, the Chippewa, the Wendat, Huron Wendat, the Mississaugas of the Credit and the Haudenosaunee. And I think the concept of belonging is certainly something that Indigenous communities reinforce again and again and again, and let’s have that chat about how we actually understand the economy and businesses being part of our attachment to place. I love this topic and I love the way that it was framed. Today, we’re going to talk about a program that CUI has been very close to called My Main Street. And it was initiated during the pandemic, funded by one of the regional development agencies in Canada, of which there are a number, and they are federal agencies whose mandates are to strengthen local economies and economic development across the country. And in Southern Ontario, it’s called the Federal Economic Development Agency for Southern Ontario. We colloquially call it Fed Dev. And they were the underwriters of this program, for which we’re very appreciative, because it’s allowed CUI to engage with hundreds and hundreds of businesses and hundreds of communities in two ways. To provide direct cash support to businesses who needed some different kinds of investment to take them to the next stage, to be able to provide more diversity of product, or hire new staff, or upgrade their facility, or invest in some inventory along Main Streets. And then the other thing that, and certainly during the pandemic, this was very true. What kinds of activities and programs could different affiliate organizations, so business improvement areas, chambers of commerce, community centres, municipal governments could initiate to bring foot traffic back onto these streets, because we, as I often say, you know, cities are about habits. And during Covid, we lost a number of habits and adopted a bunch of others. And one of them is just, we had to get people back into feeling comfortable being in public space and spending money, hopefully, in those shared spaces. So one of the other components of My Main Street has been community activations. And what kinds of forms do those activations take? Do they accomplish the economic benefits and the social benefits that we hope they do? So, and this whole field of placemaking. So, the folks that are going to come on are going to talk to us about their experience with the My Main Street program. And then we’ll continue to chat about what the challenges are, continuing, going forward. And what are we seeing on Main Streets now? And what kinds of supports do businesses need? And what can we as individuals, and as community members, and consumers, and business owners, and whatever function we play, what kind of role can we play? So just delighted to have everybody here. And please chime in on the chat if you could. Tell us where you’re coming in from. You can tell us what the weather’s like. If anybody’s got good weather today, for heaven’s sake, tell us in the chat. We’re keen to know the sun is shining somewhere. And particularly, if you have a particular experience, either with the My Main Street program or a Main Street business, let’s have it. Because we collect the chat, we publish it, and we often get really great ideas, links, suggestions in the chat, and all the things that we’re collectively thinking about to create that kind of sense of attachment and an economy of belonging. So I’m going to ask my gang to put all of their cameras on so that you can see who’s with us today to talk about My Main Street. And then we’re going to hear a little bit about their particular experiences. And then Dorian Moore, who’s a fellow at CUI, who’s an architect and a planner, wasn’t directly involved in My Main Street, but is a watcher of Main Streets. If you’re like me and you follow him on Facebook, you see Dorian regularly publishing photographs of different main streets. It’s an interesting piece of vernacular architecture. I might start with you Dorian. What the hell? Let’s start with. You Why do you think main streets matter Dorian?

Dorian Moore I think they matter because they’re, if you think about a small town or even a big city, the main street is part of the downtown or the core, which is the city’s living room. The downtowns and the main streets are the areas of a city that belong to everyone, as opposed to individual neighbourhoods or districts. And so I think from that standpoint, I think that they’re extremely important for galvanizing a city. When you try to, for instance, when you think about revitalization of a city or a small town from the outside, you think of about its main street. That’s the key signifier on whether a place is healthy or not. And then you spread out and start to look at the neighbourhoods.

Mary W. Rowe As you say, it’s a signifier, I think. We often talk about … CUI has been pretty focused through the pandemic on downtowns and main streets. And I always say, you know, the heart of a community and then the spine of a committee, the main streets are a spine. But main streets can also be the heart. When we were developing My Main Street, and we’ve done two tranches of that, as they say, two phases of it. And for the second one, we were a little further along at CUI in our research about actually mapping main streets. And if you haven’t had a chance, go look at Measuring Main Street. One of my colleagues will put it into the chat. We developed this mapping tool that allows you to see that there are 28,000 main street segments across the country. And one of the reasons that we chose that sort of image of main street is because we felt that it’s a concept, and I’ll be interested if somebody wants to chime in on the chat and tell me I’m wrong, go for it, tell me. But we had a sense that you could pretty much ask anybody, no matter what size of community they lived in, where’s your main street? And they would have an answer for us somehow. And as you say, it’s, and it works at all scales, small community, 200 people, a large community, two million people, people will tell you, oh, my main street is X, so. And I like your concept of it being a living room. I want to go next to Nathalie because Nathalie, you’re an, oh, and Dorian, I should just say you’re in Detroit. That’s where you’re coming in from.

Dorian Moore  Yes.

Mary W. Rowe Yeah, you are the poster child for how integrated the Canadian and American economy is in certain cities. You live in Windsor, and you work in Detroit.

Mary W. Rowe Yeah, so, yeah. Yeah, yeah, and you know, I always say that we’re in the empathy business in cities. You know, we’re always reminding each other how dependent we are on each other. And Windsor/Detroit is a perfect example of why we need to remind ourselves that at every level in every community, across any border, there are people like you, and me, and Nathalie, and Priya and Markie working at the local level to make their communities better. And that those national borders that preoccupy lots of other people to be thinking about don’t actually change the affinity that we have for one another. But just, I want to go to Nathalie next because you mentioned how your main street is kind of like your living room. And Nathalie, you are coming to us from …

Nathalie Carrier The living room of the country.

Mary W. Rowe The living room of the country, the National Arts Center, which when Peter Herrndorf created that space that you’re in, that now is alongside the National Arts Center, that was his aspiration. He wanted to create Ottawa’s living room. So you’re coming to us from Ottawa’s living room. How are you?  

Nathalie Carrier Sure am, I’m good. Can you hear me okay? I’m here because I’m at the “Canada After Dark” Conference, which is one of the world’s first, and certainly Canada’s first night economy conference. We just, as you know, Mary, appointed a night commissioner, so as to not say the “night-mayor” …  and this is the first of his endeavors to really bring people together and consider what happens after dark in cities and small towns and a really interesting conversation this morning about you know rural areas being parts, you know, Ottawa, a lot of people don’t know but the city of Toronto, Edmonton, Calgary, and Montreal all fit into the space that Ottawa occupies, so we have a huge rural area, and suburban area, and urban areas. So I am here, and you can probably hear behind me, there’s, it’s Ottawa Music Week here, so there’s music playing, and it really feels like a living room in here. It’s pretty amazing. And it is one of those things, if you build it, they will come and people hang out here and they use it. And it’s… It’s multicultural and it’s beautiful and there’s amazing coffee, if you’re ever in Ottawa, Equator Coffee is the place to go, but yes, so I am here.

Mary W. Rowe  I know all about that coffee and I know all about space and it’s like a covered main street in many ways. This is why main streets are so emblematic and important. And you know, if you think of shopping malls, in many ways they were trying, the designers, Dorian we’re going to blame you, all the designers that preceded you that thought malls were a good idea. They were in fact trying to create, and for Canadian climate it’s not a bad idea, a covered main street so that you could not have to be deterred by the weather, including on a day like today. So, but it has this magic ingredient of commercial life, cultural life. Nathalie, that’s what you’re experiencing, and that’s amazing. And all of it together in a space and, fortunately in your case covered.

Nathalie Carrier Yes, it’s only eight degrees in Ottawa today, fun times, but I wear my pink to bring in the sun.

Mary W. Rowe Yes, thank you and we’ll come back and talk to you about your particular engagement with My Main Street, but appreciating that the notion of the night mayor, the night commissioner, and I like this idea of how we’re starting to signify roles in cities and that we can have people take on these functions, and then we use the term mayor. We’ve just recorded a podcast earlier this week that’s going to drop in the next few days about the Ontario Bike Summit that’s happening in your town actually, Markie, it’s happening in Windsor next week. And Landrick Bennett was on it, and of course, he is the cycling mayor. So this idea that we signal that there are these different roles we can all play. Anyway, Markie, let’s go to you next. You’re in Windsor. What’s the weather like in Windsor?

Markie Tuckett Well, normally the weather is nice in Windsor, but it is cloudy and rainy and kind of a bummer to be honest. It’s kind of been like that all week and I think next week’s supposed to be the same. So hopefully it improves.

Mary W. Rowe You were about to say that it’s always sunny in Windsor, but of course you are one of the, you are at the tip of the country, right across the way from Dorian.

Markie Tuckett Southernmost point.

Mary W. Rowe Southernmost point, so you should be the warmest.

Markie Tuckett Yes, we should, but we’re not.

Mary W. Rowe And that last person to join is Priya. Priya, where are you coming in from? Muted … there we go.

Priya Mohan I’m new to this, guys. I am coming in from Burlington, Ontario. But my business, My Main Street, that I’m so proud of is located right next door in Hamilton, Ontario.

Mary W. Rowe In Hamilton, okay. Well, let’s do that now. Let’s talk about main streets. Some folks have put into the chat the specifics of My Main Street, I’m going to ask Wendy to make sure that we’re all visible all the time so that you can zoom in on people when they speak. But just generally, part of what we’re going to speak about are the two components of the program. As you can see in the chat, there were hundreds of businesses, there were thousands of businesses that applied. And we didn’t have enough resourcing, obviously, to get to everybody. But, and just a little plug there that if we have more support, we can get to more businesses. But thousands applied, hundreds were awarded support. And let’s talk to you first, Priya, about, tell us about your business. Tell us about how long you’ve been at it, what you do. And then how the My Main Street Program, how you use support from that program to do whatever you did. So over to you.

Priya Mohan Yeah, thank you so much. So what I do is I run a very small business that’s gotten a little bit bigger and bigger every year, not in small part due to the Main Street grants, quite honestly. I source pure silk saris from India and I work with a very smaller tailoring family in India to turn those saris into pieces of clothing that are one of a kind, size inclusive, age inclusive, great for travel, versatile, and that will fit you for life. And I think that that inclusivity that we build into the brand is very similar to the inclusivity that we try to foster in our community on James Street North. Our store actually, Dorian, has become a bit of a living room for our neighborhood. Ladies will come in, our target demographic is actually the invisible demographic. We are neither young and fitting into everything nor matronly. We are somewhere right in the middle and wondering where our space is. And sariKNOTsari has become that space on the street, so that our street now caters to young people who are looking for vintage clothing that was made in these tiny sizes for the tiny people of the past. And also we have art and we have activities for an older demographic. And then we have clothing that fits everybody of every size, that allows them to participate in a sustainable enterprise that’s sustainable, but also allows them to reflect who they are as individuals within that community because every piece is one of a kind.

Mary W. Rowe Wow, it’s fantastic. We’ll put in the chat where it is and everything. How long have you been in business?

Priya Mohan So we’ve been in business since 2019. We’ve changed locations once. We actually moved directly across the street from where we were. And we started out in the basement of another small business that I owned, the Pale Blue Dot. And then it grew from there on that main street across the street to a store. And now we’re on the other side of the street again. So we really call our main street, our home.

Mary W. Rowe Yeah, it’s fantastic. And it’s always, you know, this notion that businesses grow from other businesses that work. And that’s a good economic principle that work, Dorin, you’ll have a thought on this, but work comes from other work. So you’ve incrementally joined, first, you were in, did you say you were in a basement first?

Priya Mohan Yeah, in the basement of a store, like it was just kind of a hobby that I thought, oh, you know what, let’s see if there’s some space for it in the bottom of the store. And it grew. We moved across the street and then it grew and we moved across the street again.

Mary W. Rowe Yeah, I’m interested in it. I always call this collaborative retail. I feel like that’s one of the policy challenges we have to deal with is that often a business doesn’t need a full floorplate. It’s too big a space, and what you want is you want… And they can’t afford it. So why can’t we create spaces where you have a little bit of space, and that’s how farmers markets work, right? You have booth, you’re vending and then… Okay so then you moved across… that’s 2019. Tell me how your experience was through COVID. How did you survive it?

Priya Mohan Well, COVID is where we really went online. Prior to that, we were very much a brick and mortar business with an online component. During the couple of years where we didn’t have the walk-in traffic, we really switched everything over to online, and really started, and this I thought was important, we started connecting with our customer base virtually. So it wasn’t just that we became an online retail experience. We started organizing opportunities for one-on-one style consultations so that we could video chat with customers and kind of work them through our collection, which is quite different from other people’s things. Like, we have 22 styles, and then we have an infinite number of fabrics. And so just to get people to wrap their head around this different way of shopping, we were able to connect with people virtually. We started using Facebook Lives and Instagram Lives, and it’s funny because it started off as me coming into the store saying these pieces are so pretty, I need to try them on, turning on a camera and trying them on, to me not coming in one day and customers saying, it’s Friday, why weren’t you live today? And so I’m like, oh, I didn’t even know that was a thing. Okay, Friday. And then I would do it at some point on Friday. And they’re like, can you just tell us what time you’re going to do it so we can plan around it? So we now have our Friday night lives. They get joined in from all over Canada and the US now. And we record them and people watch them later. They’re on YouTube, they’re on Instagram, they’re Facebook, but we find that it’s really allowed us to connect our virtual community with our in-store community. So during COVID, what did we do? We got bigger virtually, but still remained very grounded in our local community. We just created a local community virtually as well.

Mary W. Rowe Yeah, I mean, you really are talking about an economics of belonging. If that’s, what am I doing on Friday night? I’m going to listen, I’m going to go into the live broadcast from sariKNOTsari …

Priya Mohan It’s shocking because it’s a two-hour broadcast and when I first started telling people they were saying, so people watch you for two hours? And I said, yeah, it’s shocking but they do. And I don’t think they’re watching me, I think what it is is an escape into colour. Like as you can see behind me, our clothes are all very very bright, and you talk about it being a dreary day and Nathalie you talked about wearing pink to bring in the sun. People wear sariKNOTsari to bring joy back into their lives because it can be a little grueling and sometimes just being able to throw on a bit of colour that floats ethereally around you allows you to elevate above the fray. And also because each piece is one of a, yes, I know, I love it. Because each piece one of kind, there really has developed a community around it. We have Sari Sisters now, because we can only make three pieces out of every Sari. So people will post into our swap and sell group, which is a Facebook group for people who like to shop with us. And they’ll say, I just bought this, who’s my Sari Sister? And now people are meeting up, people who’ve realized they live in the same city are meeting for coffee. People who live in Hamilton now know each other through the swap and sell group, or through the chats on the lives, and will say, well, I’m going to be at sariKNOTsari on Wednesday at one, who else is going to be there? And it really just becomes a community experience. I like to say it’s not about the clothes. The clothes are what kind of draw us in and remind us about beauty in life. But it’s really the people. And it’s about sharing the fabulous experience of these fabrics that have had their own journey in other communities, because they’re all upcycled, that take the story of womanhood from one part of the world into another part of the world, so that it can become part of a community feeling of, not only do I belong within the group of sariKNOTsari and belong within Hamilton, I am a member globally of this piece of fabric that has journeyed. And I really do feel like that belonging comes from the stories of the fabrics.

Mary W. Rowe Mm-hmm. I can hear the story lying through you. You know, I’ve had to do a number of media interviews about the closing of the Bay, and, you know, because these iconic stores are being shuttered. And one of the remarks that I made, I’m from London, where I was earlier this week, and, uh, you, know, for us, when I was a kid, the Bay, which was Simpsons at that time, was a destination, and shopping was actually a social experience, right? It was actually. When I was a kid, I wouldn’t say to my mom, I’m going to Richmond and Dundas. I would say, I’m to Simpsons. And there was a communal experience of shopping. I don’t think it’s any surprise, Dorian, you’re outnumbered here. I don’t think it any surprise that it’s mostly women on this call, and that disproportionately small businesses are owned by women. Because we would go shopping and then it wouldn’t just be me, it would be me and my friends. And then I’d see somebody over there and say, Markie, why are you buying those shoes? I wouldn’t even know who you are, but it was a social experience, right? And so, I think that’s, so I was just going to follow up with one more question to Priya, and then I’m going to come to you, Markie, which is were you tempted after COVID, were you attempted, or during COVID, were you attempting to close the bricks and mortar store?

Priya Mohan I would prefer never to have to do that. I feel like sariKNOTsari is about connection, and as much as we can enhance that virtually, we really want to be a place where you can touch fabric, and meet people, and share ideas. And I don’t think that that can be completely replaced by the virtual experience. So I would always love to, I think it’s important to have a retail hub, like a brick and mortar. And we have people who come literally from all over the country. This Tuesday, one of our customers from Edmonton is coming down and she’s planned her vacation around our store. We have, I’m not kidding.

Mary W. Rowe There’s going to be a sari, listen, I’m waiting for the tour. The sariKNOTsari tour. How did, tell us why you applied to MMS. What, what was it you needed to do that MMS made possible for you?

Priya Mohan So we, our building is very, very old. Because we’re on a very old main street, our building dates to the late 1800s. And different owners of the building have done what they can to update it, but there’s always something else needed. So what we got from our most recent Main Street grant was for our local customers, we had fans installed because there is no air conditioning. So, especially our demographic really needed the breeze. And then, yeah it was crazy.

Mary W. Rowe Women of a certain age are nodding.

Priya Mohan And that’s why they were going for the silk is they’re like, I can barely keep cool. At least the silk has moisture wicking and the air flows through it. And then what did to the basement is we finished it off a little bit more than it was and created a studio. So instead of just setting up our cameras in the middle of the store, we now have a studio that we can set up that’s got nice lighting, and a great camera, and microphones so that when we do our lives, which are now happening about twice a week, we actually have a place designated to do them. So it doesn’t seem quite so amateur.

Mary W. Rowe So I was able to take you to the next level, which is exactly what you want this kind of support to do. Okay, Markie, you’ve been patient there in freezing cold Windsor. Talk to us about the business that you run, and how long you’ve been doing it, and what you do, and then we can talk a little bit more about what My Main Street was able to make happen for you. Go ahead.

Markie Tuckett So my business is called Timber and Plum, or some people know it as Timber and Plum Kitchens and Cabinetry. So I’m a designer, I design, supply, install custom cabinetry. I don’t physically install it myself, I have installers who do it for me obviously because I have nice nails. But yeah, so I started that business in May of 2018, so I actually just celebrated my seven-year anniversary. I started the business when I was 25. I actually moved to Windsor the day I started my business, and I didn’t know anyone here or even have a single client here when I moved here to start my business. So some people are like, well, that was a little risky, but I knew it’s what I wanted to do. And my husband at the time was living down here, so we ended up buying a house and setting roots here, and we love the area. So if you’re ever looking for anywhere to travel in Ontario, come to Windsor, it’s kind of cool. So I started my business during, kind of before the pandemic, and then basically started getting a good client base, figuring out kind of who my clients were as a 25-year-old business owner, and kind of setting routes. So at first I was just a mobile business, so I would go to clients’ houses. And then in 2020, I decided to dive into getting a space. So I have a showroom, which is where I’m sitting now, it’s about 800 square feet. It required a full renovation, but the renovation of the space allowed me to meet clients here. So I have an actual kitchen and other areas in the space to show clients of what the products I offer, and kind what we can do with their spaces. But as well, I host workshops and networking events here. I’m also the co-chair of our old riverside BIA, which is one of the BIAs within Windsor. And yeah, it was just like, my business started out as like, I just kind of want to design for customers and give them a really good experience when they’re doing their renovation. Because if anyone’s ever done a renovation, they know it’s very stressful. And then it kind of morphed into, I was hosting networking events, doing workshops here, pop-ups for different shops, like again, giving people a platform to work here as well. And just kind of kept going with it.

Mary W. Rowe It’s so interesting both of you, just as Priya was saying, that these are social businesses. They’re, you know, it’s a relationship based thing. Markie, why on earth did you, at 25, say hey, this is the business I’m going to do and oh, I’m going to move to Windsor and start it the day I get there. Where did that come from?

Markie Tuckett So that’s actually my background is kitchen and bath design. So that was what I was doing before I moved to Windsor.

Mary W. Rowe You were like trained. You actually took training somewhere?

Markie Tuckett Yeah, so I kind of like absorbed all of my experience from working for other people, and then was like at 25, like, yeah, you know what I can design, I have really good client relations, I’m a big problem solver, I’m quick on my feet, I’m young and I’m very passionate. So I just kind of jumped in, and then the last seven years has just been learning logistics about business, which I picked up very fast. It’s the roller coaster of going through a pandemic, economic downturn, tariffs, et cetera, et cetera that has really been like the, I would say the determining factor in growth of my company, to be honest.

Mary W. Rowe It’s so interesting, but also this idea that there’s an embodiment to your, you guys are kind of exemplifying that we are not going to surrender ourselves to just living on screens, even though we’re on screen today, that there still is a requirement to actually physically be spatially coordinated to one another in some ways. I know that our City Talk audience is disappointed to see that our guests today are of such low energy and lack enthusiasm. Really, I’m just, I am smiling because of the vibrancy that you’re bringing. And the next person I’m going to call in is up to the task, just saying. So Nathalie, talk to us, because you’re on the other side of the equation. You were, I think you’ve done two My Main Street programs, as I recall. Weren’t you in the first one as well? And you are on the community activator side. So both Markie and Priya were recipients of the business sustainability stream, which had almost, I think it had $10 million, somebody will put into the chat. I think our total investment across the two Main Street programs is in the tens of millions, but this last tranche was I think 10 or 12, and they both were on that side. And on the other side is this community activator side. So Nathalie, just describe for people what it is you do, what your day job is when you’re not there in Johnston, Ottawa’s living room, and then what your particular engagement has been with the program, with My Main Street.

Nathalie Carrier Sure. First of all, thank you for having me. I’m speaking to you from the unceded, once-surrendered territory of the Algonquin Nation of Pikwakanaga, so I’m an executive director of the Vanier BIA business improvement area, which some of you will know, because your businesses are likely in them, but essentially business improvement areas are Ontario’s greatest import. They were created in Toronto and they are this idea that business owners can get together, pool their money and better their communities, and their business opportunities together, rather than try to navigate things. So we do things like you know banners and benches, the traditional stuff, and promotions, and activations, and events. In my community, so my community is the Vanier community, it’s about two kilometers from where I sit right now in downtown Ottawa. It used to be traditionally a francophone unilingual city in the middle of the city of Ottawa, and an amalgamation, was amalgamated as a ward of Vanier. So we currently have, I’ll give you a little bit of background. We have the highest population of Inuit people outside Nunavut, the highest population of Indigenous people, the highest, a very, very high concentration of Francophones, obviously, for obvious reasons, which is kind of dwindling and changing, because a lot of the Francophones in Ontario are coming to us as newcomers, which is another high population that we have. And we also have the highest population of racialized businesses in the city of Ottawa. So most of our businesses are very, very, very multicultural, and where our BIA is different than others is in, I came to this organization almost eight years ago at the end of 2017, which, as some of you may know, was the 150th of Canada. And I was the production manager for all the events here in Ottawa, and the city councilor was the co-chair. And he brought me in and he said if you can walk a dragon down the street, and that’s for another day I’ll explain that story to you, but if you can walk the dragon down a street then you could probably crack the nut that’s happening in our community to make sure that people can get together. So blindly I took this job having no idea what a BIA was, or how I was going to do it, but what we’ve managed to do is really make conscious decisions to invest in the community. Understanding that economic development sometimes has to take a step back because economic development kind of comes naturally once you have a community that people love to live in, and are safe in, and feel great about, and promote outside on their own. And so we got the grant, the My Main Street grant, I guess four years ago, wasn’t it Mary, the first round? We got, we were awarded $250,000 to transform a parking lot into a community event space. And the repercussions of that grant have been ginormous. I can’t even begin to tell you, we’re actually on phase two of the hub grant with the Trillium Foundation, and right now with Carleton University we’re building a park that’s very similar to, I don’t know if you can hear what’s going on behind me, but it is an insanely beautiful voice. Holy cow. We can hear you beautifully. It’s like God behind me singing, it’s amazing.

Mary W. Rowe We’re hearing your insanely beautiful voice. We’re glad there’s a better voice behind you.

Nathalie Carrier Okay, good. And so we, you know, we are transforming it into, for those of you who know Rainbow Park in Vancouver, that was the inspiration. So this park that has spaces for families to gather and people to gather, long tables. And so we’ll be revealing that at the end of September. So it really is one of those, you know, it’s not that far from your story, Priya, where you have this idea and then people come on board and it grows into something, and before you know it you’re like driving this boat and you have no idea where you’re heading, but you’re, like, come on in everybody let’s make this work. And you get funding here and funding there, and it just happens. But I think, you know, it’s very similar to the resiliency that a lot of our businesses have. This idea like, it’s a pandemic? Okay, let’s go, now we’re going to go online, okay we can’t go online anymore because there’s an occupation, no worries, we’re going to do this. Oh now it’s tariffs, so I can’t actually buy the product, got it, let’s pivot again, and so we’ve done a lot of that. And then last year we were awarded the My Main Street grant again, but for a different street. So I represent three main streets, one is Beechwood, which used to be the heart and we transformed this place called St. Charles Square into a place that has music and animation, we do festivals and we’re doing, so we outfitted it with the infrastructure. This is the best part of the My Main Street grants, is that it allowed us, the BIA, to apply for a program where we could buy the infrastructure that now runs itself. And so now we lend out those tables and share the tents to the communities, and they do their own dinners. Now we’re building out this hub that has its own table and a built-in kitchen that people can just borrow. And that really is where I think the magic of this organization starts. It might just be fans and a beautiful light to do webinars for Priya, but it really grows into something else. It builds something that’s much bigger and it will last a lifetime. I am amazed and very proud to say that since we got that first grant, we’ve now won four awards for the hub, including an international award on placemaking, which is pretty amazing. So we’re pretty proud of our little parking lot that could. That’s what we call it.

Mary W. Rowe You know, thank you, Nathalie, and all of these, I’m sure that in the chat, if you… Chatterers, don’t let us down here, post some examples you’ve got of these kinds of investments that can be fairly modest, small things that can actually catapult into something big, which is wonderful, and as you suggest, Natalie has a sustaining impact. I always want to encourage people that when you’re looking at a street or a neighbourhood, Dorian, I’m sure you’re going to, everybody should come on and open your mics so that I’m not going to have to say to anybody that you’re muted. We can’t hear any background noise behind you. So don’t worry, keep your mics open. Dorian, one of the things that I always want to encourage people, I know you have this sensibility, is that when you look in a neighbourhood or a street, to not see the deficits, but to see the opportunity, right? And so when I hear Nathalie say, we got resources to convert a parking lot. This is true of downtowns and main streets across the country. You’ve got spaces that are obviously underused, and, a parking lot that very rarely has a car in it, let’s say. So how do we spot those spaces and do a mansion of things? And sometimes it doesn’t require, sometimes it requires $250,000, but not always. Dorian, how do spot them?

Dorian Moore The way I look at these things is, first off I’ll talk about my motivations behind looking at retail. So full disclosure, I am a partner in a number of retail ventures, most prominently a brand called Pure Detroit that deals in products by Detroit artisans and products about Detroit, and then a number of cafes and other entities. That kind of frames my passion towards these retail as something that can help, you know, generate the activity and the understanding of this living room space that I talked about. The other thing that frames how I think about this is, I look at the street itself, Main Street, but any street in general, as our primary public space. At least in North America. We’ve got parks and plazas and all of these things, but the key public space is the street itself. And so when you think about the street and you flip the script from just thinking about it as a place for transactions, right? You think about it as a space to gather, a place to be in, then you can start to spot those opportunities. Whether it’s a vacant storefront that becomes a pop-up, or becomes a gallery showcase, or it’s an empty lot that is transformed by just dealing with the idea of, you know, hiding cars through plantings or structures that mask the undesirable elements. So you have to think of the street as this major public space, and then it starts to open up all of those opportunities.

Mary W. Rowe Yeah, I mean, and we have a bit of a fight here because main streets, I often have to remind people, you know, that the street existed before the car did.

Dorian Moore Exactly.

Mary W. Rowe Streets have existed for hundreds of years and they may have been a dirt path, right? So, and as you say, the largest chunk of public space in any community are the streets. And as you say, Dorian, they belong to us. So how we can create more and more of an approach that shares these streets. I’m interested in the case of Priya and Markie, and I’m sure Nathalie will say this, but have you found that it’s effective to pull your business out onto the sidewalk?

Priya Mohan Yes, I’m going to pop in here, Markie. Our street actually has an organic event that happens on the second Friday of every month. It’s called Air Crawl. And so that is when the entire neighbourhood takes all their little arts and crafts that they’ve been working on all winter long and sets them up onto the sidewalk. So the sidewalk has become a really important element of our street, not just for the storefronts, but for the community. And then of course, we have Super Crawl on our street, which also opens things up in September, again, the second weekend of September. But yes, putting things out on the street has been huge. We recently, we had a donation rack on our streets where customers would bring in clothes, and we took that clothing, put it on a rack and we called it our $5 donation rack and people would walk by. Now, there may have been some theft, but here’s what I’m thinking. If somebody took something off that rack because they really needed it. They needed it, that’s okay. And then other people would go out there and find beautiful clothing, and be able to come into the store and purchase it for five dollars each, with all the money going to BodyBrave Canada, which helps women and men who have eating disorders. So we are able to use that space to bring people in and to foster community.

Mary W. Rowe And this idea, people forget that local economies are completely dependent on trust. Yes. That’s how we operate, you know? And the banking system, when you pay with your card, you trust that the bank is going to follow through and all that stuff. But the history of it is, and we all know this, that if you have a business, I have businesses that I patronize weekly, or if not every other day. And if I don’t have my wallet and I show up, they say, yeah, yeah pay me later. It’s just a given. And so, I think this idea that you can take the risk to put something out on the on the sidewalk, and I heard Nathalie say they needed it, right? Markie, what’s your experience? How do you use the sidewalk? Do you?

Markie Tuckett So we are on like a fou-lane superhighway, our main street.

Mary W. Rowe Okay then, so there’s not a lot of sidewalks.

Markie Tuckett Yeah we have like, we have sidewalks on both sides, but we have a very active roadway through like our technically our main street of where I’m located. So we don’t use the sidewalks as much because there’s also weird things with the city allowing signage and stuff on the sidewalk, but that being said, a lot of businesses do leave their doors open, put bowls of water out for dogs. And I have the opposite effect. I’m not like a retail shop where people can come in and buy stuff. I’m more of like come in, say hello, look around, maybe buy a kitchen from me five years down the road. But that being said, some of our businesses have the most beautiful products in their front windows. We have like an open or a turn on lights policy at night where we encourage people to leave some sort of light on so people can look.

Mary W. Rowe Windows shopping.

Markie Tuckett Yeah, which is a huge thing because we have a ton of walking traffic in our area, because we are in such a vibrant, family-oriented neighbourhood. So I leave my lights on at night, especially the ones over my island in the front, and to be honest, the majority of my business is people walking by at night and then coming back, you know, on the weekend or another day or calling me and saying, like, hey, I looked in your window that night, your shop’s beautiful, I would love to chat with you about a renovation. So…

Mary W. Rowe Yeah, it’s interesting. I mean, go ahead, Nathalie, I’m sure that’s been true of the activations you’re doing. You’re trying to… Communities need to be porous, right? It’s one of these principles that we have that you want. And I think, so the store becomes the inside, the outside, the street, the sidewalk, the backyard, whatever it is. Your activations, I think, are all about that, Nat, right?

Nathalie Carrier Yeah, so like our, you know, when we do the music at the St. Charles Church, the call to action is go get takeout and come and eat it with us. You know, this idea that you go into the store and you come out of the stores. And so that is, you know six to eight every Wednesday night, this year every Wednesday night. We’re very excited. You, know, and that’s the other thing that these grants do, is they allow you to test something and see if it’s going to work. And then when it works, you have that proof. So with us last year, we got, you, know I think seventy-five thousand always. To do the St. Charles Square test, and we started putting at musicians. And magically, 100 people would show up every Wednesday night. And they arrive at 5:59, and they leave at 8:01, and they go and put their kids to bed and everything else. And so it really is this outside in. The other thing I think about is when a lot of BIAs, they’ll do events, and then they bring in food trucks and they do all this stuff. We have actually closed that. We have said, our activations are happening, and it has to be the story that’s there. If your story isn’t on our main street, we aren’t letting you in. You can’t pay us to come and sell your food, we’re here to support. And so what we’ve created is Jacobson’s, which is like this gourmet sort of grocery store, we create the Jacobson’s Bistro, and only that day do they make little cheese charcuterie, you know, cones and then we invite our other businesses to come, and then some of the restaurants that may just be on the periphery, we set up a food court on St. Charles Square for them to come and sell their pizza, sell their pasta, sell their things. And so, we really do encourage that way, so we’re not bringing in something external and using their money to bring in competition. We actually let them have their say. The other thing I want to say is that, spaces can look very different and main streets can look very different, and Mary, you’ll know about this because I talk to you about it all the time and I have it in your calendar this year. But one of our biggest events of the year is our dinner in the cemetery. The cemetery on our main street, it happens to be the national cemetery. So it’s an older cemetery. It’s not, we don’t do it in the section where people have just passed, but people have passed hundreds of years ago. And we sit 200 people down at one long table. 86% of the people at that table are our businesses. So they buy tickets, they bring their friends, they bring clients, and it sold out in one day. It’s a $350 ticket and we raised $65,000 for the local food banks. So this idea that you could come together and put in your businesses and put it in your community, and we have this cheers that’s like, 200 people in one long table. You can look down the table and what you see is this beautiful, communal, you know, spirit, which is amazing. So using these underutilized spaces is so key.

Mary W. Rowe Just Google the Beechwood Cemetery dinner, folks, and you will see these. It’s called it’s unbelievable. What’s it called, Nat?

Nathalie Carrier Partage, like French for portage.

Mary W. Rowe Partage. It’s the most beautiful thing. And back to how simple these things could be. That’s expensive, $350, but…

Nathalie Carrier But it started as 25 people in a table and we all put in money and got catering from the local restaurant and it’s grown to this big event.

Mary W. Rowe It’s really the extension of the lemonade stand. Just saying. Dorian, what are the obstacles to making this happen more? What do you see as a planner and as a designer? Are there rules that need to be lifted? Or is it, what do we need to do to see more of this happening?

Dorian Moore I think the main thing gets at what you started this whole conversation off with, and it has to do with what we just talked about, trust and investment in a community. And that’s the spaces themselves. And part of what makes all of these situations that we’re talking about work is the entrepreneurial spirit. And in order for there to be startups and entrepreneurs in today’s environment, you need spaces that can accommodate them. And quite often what we do, and you see this in Toronto for sure, is every building that’s developed or redeveloped is set up on the on the final floor for Shopper’s Drug Mart, right? That’s what it set up for.

Mary W. Rowe With all due respect to the Shoppers Drug Marts, because lots of people rely on them, but we are kind of the anti-monocultural use here. We’re saying no, not chains. I mean, Markie, your business, I guess your competitors are the Home Depots and the Canadian Tires, right? You’re an independent business. And a lot of independent businesses. So how do you respond to Dorian’s comment? How do we get more of you?

Markie Tuckett I think it’s just making the spaces approachable and affordable, to be honest.

Mary W. Rowe Okay. Okay.

Markie Tuckett Okay. I got into my space because it was very affordable, and then I worked out a deal with my landlord that I could renovate the whole space to be what I wanted. And now that’s done and I’ve been in the same space now for coming up to five years. And it just basically comes back to affordability, because with the economy kind of roller-coastering constantly, businesses like mine anyways, we rely on construction. So if there’s no new homes being built and people aren’t renovating because they’re not spending their money on that, then all of these businesses fizzle out, so we have no money to pay for rent, basically.

Nathalie Carrier Sorry, I was just going to add Mary, that like, one of the things that we’ve done in Vanier is work with the developers. So we have a very, you know, gentrification is a bad word, but we have a very end of life-kind of community, all of our buildings are tiny and they’re falling apart. And so they’re being replaced with all these buildings, but we’ve a lot of work, working with designers to convince them that it’s not about three, 10,000 square foot commercial spaces on the main floor that’s going to work for us. What works for us is 1500 square feet. And most of them have responded. And there was actually this thing that was happening at council and planning in Ottawa where, there was this building that went to go up and they used, they said, well, you know, this building went up and they haven’t rented in a year. And we barked back and we said, yeah, because they won’t move away from their 10,000 square feet, if they don’t get the LCBO, the shoppers, or the Farm Boy, they’re not renting it out. And then and then it creates this idea that nobody wants to rent on our street. Well, that’s not the case. They just can’t rent at that level. Or they don’t want to rent at that price, and you can’t incubate businesses on 10,000 square feet, so, we’ve worked really well with our developers and a lot of them are working.

Mary W. Rowe  And you convinced them for smaller units. Priya, how many square feet is your space?

Priya Mohan It is not that much, it’s about a thousand. It’s quite small. Yeah and luckily we have the basement.

Mary W. Rowe And you have a basement. So Dorian, what kinds of rules could we see change or how do we create more of that smaller space or more opportunity for collaborative retail? What are some tools that cities can do.

Dorian Moore Well, a lot of the things that I’ve seen, and I’m going to add to this a little bit, we’ve been seeing, and I’ve been studying spaces that are anywhere from 200 square feet to 400 square feet. Those are the kinds of spaces we need as startup situations in our storefronts. So the question becomes, what do you do with the rest of it? Well, the opportunity is there for the inclusion of some of the housing that we need, right, as in the remainder of those spaces. And so I think we need to begin at the municipal level to start to enable the subdivision of those space and the easing of any zoning impediments that may stop someone from doing a horizontal, mixed use situation as opposed to vertical. So those are the things we need to activate those kinds of spaces. We’ve seen them in cities all around. I was just in Amsterdam looking at spaces that were, you know, 20 by 15. I just posted about it this morning, in Ottawa last week, where I saw a bookstore that was eight feet by 20 feet long. Just 160 square feet.

Priya Mohan Is that in the market?

Dorian Moore In the market.

Priya Mohan I saw it this weekend.

Dorian Moore Yeah, it’s a great little space and it’s perfect for entrepreneurs. So I think we need to be thinking even smaller.

Nathalie Carrier And you see that all over Europe. When you go to Europe, you see tiny little stores and they’ve been in the same family for 60, 70, a hundred and something years, sometimes even longer. Shoemakers and bookmakers, and we’ve kind of killed the incubation of business through development. And we’ve been working really closely with City Hall to make sure that these planning things, that there’s incentives to subdividing into smaller areas and incentives into making our main streets more authentic.

Mary W. Rowe Do we need more pop-ups?

Nathalie Carrier  They’re so hard to do.

Markie Tuckett I think it depends on location. We actually, in Windsor, I don’t know if anyone knows this, but I think we won like the best farmers market in all of, possibly Canada, or Ontario. And our farmers market when I first moved here was small, you know, it was like 20 vendors and now they’ve grown it to like, I feel like it’s like at least 50 vendors and then they have a whole section that’s like even like pet based businesses. So people want to walk their dogs, it’s very walkable. They let multiple vendors of the same thing come in. It’s just everybody’s kind of got their offering and table on their spot, and they come every week, and it runs from like April to October. So farmers markets and stuff like that, big festivals, we’re actually getting a farmer’s market as well. So that does really well down here.

Nathalie Carrier Is that the farmers market too that takes all the leftover produce and it gets donated through this amazing social program? I’m pretty sure that’s in Windsor too, where anything that’s left over at the end of the day gets taken up by an organization, and then redistributed into boxes and given to, I mean it’s the most beautiful thing. I’m pretty sure it’s that one in Windsor. Love it. Yeah.

Mary W. Rowe Circular economy.

Dorian Moore  It’s that kind of thinking that we need to bring to these vacant storefronts. Imagine storefronts as vendors versus permanent storefront. And you can activate them on weekends, these empty spaces, the same way you do vendors in a farmers market. And so I think we have to creatively think about how we use it on the weekend and then during the week, what are the functions that will work there on a pop-up, as you say, pop- up basis. You could even rent them out by the hour if need be, so that it’s always changing. We have to think creatively, especially in our smaller towns.

Mary W. Rowe Go ahead, Priya.

Priya Mohan I just, ah, you just made me think of something, Dorian. We should have an Airbnb type thing for empty storefronts so that you can, wouldn’t that be great because there are empty store fronts on our street and I don’t know how to find an empty store front in Ottawa, for example, to do a month long pop-up, so there you go. You talked about a creative solution.

Nathalie Carrier You’re going to call me, Priya. We’re going to hook up after this.

Priya Mohan  Absolutely. Actually, I need some sun.

Nathalie Carrier I need some sariKNOTsari’s.

Priya Mohan Oh, I would love to play dress up with you.

Mary W. Rowe This idea though, of temporary uses, I think that’s the other thing, is that sometimes the commitment to actually renting a space, taking a lease, it becomes such a big deal.

Nathalie Carrier The insurance, the legality, building code, and like we’ve tried to do it and everybody goes pop-ups are so easy, in Toronto they’re easy because your legislation allows you to do things that are… You know like in Toronto you can go into a restaurant where the roof is exposed and the walls a bit cracked and that’s, in Ottawa you would never be allowed to open that restaurant, you know, you would never, there’s all these weird restrictions and so it just becomes very challenging. 

Mary W. Rowe Just to say to our listeners who are across the country, who are listening to all these great experiences from Southern Ontario, it’s because the My Main Street program was taken up by that one RDA. We would love it if My Main Street was across the country, so if you’re, let’s hope it’s coming to a town or a city near you soon if the government is listening, and appreciates the potential to build the economy from the ground up, which is that all of these folks are talking about. As we sort of round the corner.

Nathalie Carrier Small investments can have massive impacts, you know, being able to buy a bunch of tables and chairs means that this space is activated all year long now. And they didn’t have to invest in every single one of those other events. They don’t have invest in Priya long-term. She now created her own community, her own things out of, you know, that’s the beauty of it. We live in Ottawa, Mary. I tell every minister that’ll listen.

Mary W. Rowe It is interesting though, that you’re talking about, even a small, I mean the My Main Street program is not a huge program, but it was able to provide investments to get businesses, and we hope communities, to the next stage. As we, just as we finish the program, we’ve got a few more minutes, and we’re talking at a national level about reimagining theCanadian economy, because of our relationship with the United States having so dramatically changed, and then we’ve got climate, and we’ve got recessions, and everything else. Thoughts from each of you in terms of what you see 2025-26 being in terms of your focus to nurture Main Street economies. Priya, Markie, Nathalie, and then Dorian.

Priya Mohan So we have a huge client base in the States, and we have been affected by these tariffs, not in terms of our products, which are ethically made in India and haven’t been tariffed yet, but we do carry a number of Canadian brands that ethically produce their products in China. And unfortunately, we’ve just had to pull those off the website for our American clientele, just because the tariffs are astronomical. And what we’ve done as a pivot, is we’ve increased our advertising to Canadians, I mean, we always were, but we’ve increased our advertising there. And we’re also branching out into Europe and Australia now with our advertising, trying really hard to pull other countries that share the same demographic. But yeah, it’s definitely posing a challenge. I feel like I know more about tariffs than I have ever thought I would need to know, ever. Like it’s insane how I read these documents now.

Mary W. Rowe Well, and it puts a challenge for a business like yours that’s dependent on a source product coming from somewhere else. And we are, we work in that global environment, so we appreciate that. So people, and, it’s making consumers much more knowledgeable too, Priya. They’re looking at labels and, yeah. Markie, what about you?

Markie Tuckett  I think Windsor is just a growing city, I think we have a huge house shortage down here, especially affordable homes. I know a lot of people who can’t afford to buy a home because the homes that are being built are like 1.8 million dollars, and to be honest like, I’m not even able to afford that and I mean, my husband and I, we kept our small house and it’s the first house we bought. So I think it’s investing in more affordable housing for people’s people, so people can get into a house and then move on to the next level, so when my clients are coming back around, and they’re getting into their next home, they’re able to renovate and kind of keep things going. So that way the next generation is able to take on those smaller, more affordable homes.

Mary W. Rowe Yeah, and the incremental nature of that. Nat, what about you?

Nathalie Carrier:  I think we’re going to have to start doing on a local, micro level, what the Prime Minister has started to do on a national level, right? Remove the policies and all of these red tape things that prevent us from actually creating ourselves, create this opportunity and take risks. We’re going to need small business to take risks. We’re going to need people to get out there and open those stores, and open those coffee shops, and those law firms, and design firms and really take that risk. And so whatever we can do to help entrepreneurs do it. And back to the My Main Street, $10,000, which was the initial grants that went directly to businesses, we had 10 businesses take them up. And that’s huge. It made a huge difference. We had a butcher that got a saw that he could never buy before, and now he can sell all this stuff. So it’s all these little investments that the government’s going to make that’s going allow people to take risks, and then get out of their way, get the policy out of the way so that they can do what they do best.

Mary W. Rowe Dorian last word to you about getting everything getting those policies out of the way. What what do you think we should, what are you going to be focusing on this year?

Dorian Moore Well, I’m going to be focusing on looking at more of these retail spaces, but also I would encourage, being the American here, I would encourage Canadians to look inward, based on recent events, find out what’s special about Canada, what’s special about your local area, and focus our energies on nurturing businesses that represent that and can create something special that they can give back to their own communities.

Mary W. Rowe Wow, you guys are just great. I think we’ve got to start the My Main Street CUI road trip and we’re all going to go, on our bicycles because we don’t want to use cars or whatever, but we’re going to get ourselves to each of your communities and hang out in your beautiful retail space, and shop with you and shop with your neighbours, and have an event on the sidewalk, and make sure that the municipal rules are removed so that we can celebrate an economy of belonging. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for joining us, We have another one a week from today. It’s going to be about a key anchor on Main Street, which is the future of spaces that faith communities have built, churches, lots of them closing. So tune in here a week from today to hear about that, sacred space’s civic value. Nathalie, always great to see you. Back to the, we had a request about more programming about night mayors, night commissioners will do that. Yeah, yeah, great to meet you, Markie, and the renovation and new construction business in Windsor – Let’s hope it booms. Priya, we’re all coming for a sari. And Dorian, always great to have your sage advice and broad perspective. And if you’re on Facebook, folks, Google Dorian and you’ll see his post there. It’s a really great opportunity to learn. Thanks for joining us on CityTalk, everybody. Great to see you. Thank you.